Felsh

My dad went AWOL with my mom and missed his birthday. Well, he didn't miss it, exactly. We're missing it! Dad's in Paris celebrating with world-famous hot chocolate and night time views of the trendy Marais. Happy birthday, Dad!

For my dad's birthday, I would like to apologize for one Saturday morning in 1989. My parents had a small car, an orange MG dubbed "The Pumpkin," that they let me drive to high school. I really wanted to drive it to youth symphony because I thought it would make me look cool. My dad said no because it was too far to go in such a tiny car. He seemed so overprotective! I steeled my nerves and drove the Pumpkin right up the driveway with my dad running after me, calling me back. I drove to my rehearsal. If the car did make me look cool, I didn't notice because I was sick the whole time about disobeying. Sorry, Dad! At least I didn't get a ticket.

I'm glad I survived that Saturday morning indiscretion and went on to worry my dad in countless other ways! He worries about his 8 grandchildren, too, and keeps tabs on their comings and goings. Whenever I take a kid to the doctor, Scott reminds me, "You better call your dad and tell him what the doctor said." He asks the kids about their schoolwork, teaches them things from books and scriptures and sticks up for the kids when I wonder what's wrong with them. He knows where their music teachers live and what time they get out of ballet and what they're working on at school. Last winter when Scott tore his achilles, Dad took over driving Golda to and from play practice three times a week. Nobody asked him to, he just took over that job. Imagine a 20-minute drive six times a week with a surly 12-year-old! In a few years, that surly tween might be speeding up the street in a huff and I'll be home praying for her safe return. I'll call my dad and he'll wait with me. He's been there. He'll know what to do. Just like he always does.

And the Winner Is...

Thanks for all the great book recommendations. I think I'll have to go through all the ones I haven't read and read them. I was going to start with The Hunger Games, which Golda just read (Thanks, Motherboard), but Coco gave me The Help, which got 5 stars on Amazon from over 900 readers. I can't go wrong, can I? When I get back, I'll have several of your favorites waiting for me at the library. And I'll pass along The Help to anyone who wants to read it.

93

Happy Birthday, Nana Ruby! Today Nana is 93 years old. I was lucky enough to celebrate with her and Coco and Xanthe at Marie Callendar's for lunch. For Nana's birthday, I tried to think of my favorite thing about her, and I guess it's her love for music. Nana's singing voice has a permanent spot in my brain. I can always recall the cheerful and energetic timbre of her voice when I imagine her singing. There was no time for singing today at lunch, with all the delicious food to eat, but Nana's lyrical voice carried a wonderful quality with everything she said. When the last pie crumb was finished off, Nana said, "Now when my friends ask me what I did for my birthday, I can tell them I had lunch with you." Nana Ruby has a way of making everyone feel special. That might be a quality more beautiful, even, than her singing voice.

I Need Help!

We are going on a beach trip soon and I don't have a book! I'm reading I Capture the Castle right now, which is delightful, but I have to have it finished by the time we leave for the trip. So, what is the BEST book you have ever read? I need a recommendation. My parameters are:
1. No Russian literature. Life's too short for all that angst. Plus, I already read all the Cliff's Notes in high school.
2. No Nicholas Sparks. How did this guy get published?
3. I am not a big fan of the Bronte sisters. I realize this makes me patently unlikable, but there's nothing I can do about it. Lacking appreciation for Victorian literature is a character flaw.
4. Oprah and I seem to have very different taste in books.

So, is there anything left? And if you have a copy of a page turner that can get wet and sandy, bring it over! I'll give you my copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society that I can't seem to get rid of. (It was great!)

Modern Pinball Wizard

Question: What inspires young children to read, helps them with math skills and telling time, fosters positive sibling relationships, teaches them to organize their time and prioritize their tasks and motivates them to get their work done? Answer: video games.

Freestone is knocking himself out to earn video game time. All he has to do is read one minute to earn a minute of video game time. Several times, I have caught him earnestly sounding out words with a timer by his side. He is required to read 400 minutes a month for school, and he already has over 500 minutes for September. His stellar reading record is partially due to Ruby reading to him late into the night, and partially due to his video game addiction. Sometimes he has to pause the game to read so he can earn enough time to finish a level. Sad, but funny, too. In the daily slog through practicing, homework and reading, I sure am glad I don't have to nag Freestone to get things done. I can save all my energy getting Araceli through her tasks. I have yet to find her currency. I could try "mommy minutes." Perhaps Ari would willingly do her homework in exchange for time changing diapers and burping Ptolemy. It's worth a try!

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Wicked awesome, that is. Something's coming...you can feel it in the air. And if you can't feel it in the air, you can see it on the kids! Ptolemy scored a lion costume from Michelle, who is also making Golda an Alice in Wonderland costume in her Halloween sweat shop. Coco stole the little girls away and outfitted them for the season. She also brought Freestone a ninja costume which he deemed "the worst ever," right before he put in on and refused to take it off.

Costumes aren't the only harbinger of Halloween around here. We picked the scariest apples we could find in a fallow orchard nearby for our witch heads. It's a fifth grade homework assignment, but it's so fun that everyone did one. I'm sure you can find instructions online for carving apples if pumpkins are too unwieldy for your carving skills. Apples are the perfect size for little hands. Free and Ari did a great job with a knife. Not a single trip to the ER. The apple heads will dry and shrink and we'll make little dresses and hats for them. In the background of the witch craft (ha ha), Golda was cutting out and sewing tree-shaped Christmas ornaments. Bring on the holidays! All of them! While I'm at it, mark your calendars for the Halloween party: 4:00-5:00 on Halloween, as usual. We'll be ready!

Happy New Year 5770

Happy Rosh Hashanah to all our Jewish friends. Tonight marks the beginning of the Jewish new year. Beyond dipping apples in honey, we don't celebrate Rosh Hashanah because, well, we're not Jewish. We're still living back in the year 2009. The Jews are 3,ooo years ahead of us! It's nice, though, to have so many options for setting goals, just in case you want to make some resolutions. If you miss this one, you can catch the Western new year January first or the Chinese new year shortly after. I like that Rosh Hashanah occurs around the beginning of the school year because it always seems like a time of renewal to me.

My one and only true Rosh Hashanah dinner was when I was 17. I was a freshman in college at Indiana. Many, many of the students in the music school were Jewish. A roommate of mine, LeAnne, noticed I was going to be alone in the dorms over Rosh Hashanah and invited me home with her to Skokie, Illinois. Her family wasn't particularly observant; no yarmulkes, no readings of the Torah. Rosh Hashanah dinner was just a chance for family to come together and celebrate, to maybe reflect on their rich heritage, and to meet LeAnne's Mormon roommate from Utah! I am still grateful for that invitation. In LeAnne's home, I felt wrapped in comfort, accepted by a family that was remarkably similar to my own, yet worlds apart. As I stood on the brink of adulthood that fall, that Rosh Hashanah dinner nourished my view of the world out there, letting me know that outside my cocoon, all kids of wonderful people were celebrating, worshipping, befriending, striving and living good lives. That Rosh Hashana was an awakening for me, a gentile, that I have carried with me ever since. Thanks, LeAnne.

Chinese Girl

Xanthe got a haircut today. When she saw the result in the mirror, she exclaimed, "I look like a Chinese girl!" If I had to name her emotion, I would say she sounded pleased. Even pleasantly surprised. It made me wonder how Xanthe sees herself. When the world looks at her sweet little face, they see immediately that she has Chinese heritage. If they look further, they see Caucasian parents and understand instantly her story. Born in China, adopted from an orphanage. That's a lot of personal information that Xanthe has no choice but to offer to everyone she meets, just by virtue of her almond eyes and silky, black hair.

Sometimes I think Xanthe sees herself in the image of her older sisters. She is one of them, after all. Why should she feel Chinese in their midst? She is more aware of her Chinese-ness when she is with her friend Emily or other Chinese children. Once, after playing with Emily and some other Chinese-American friends, Xanthe commented, "Moms aren't Chinese." Just a fact that has been empirically proven in Xanthe's world. Another time, Xanthe was at my violin shop when I met with one of my suppliers, a friend who is Chinese-American. Xanthe took one look at his face and shouted, "I'm China! I'm China!" As if to say, "Hey, I think we have something in common."

As a little girl, Xanthe can swing effortlessly between the two sides of her being. She likes to feel Chinese, she likes to forget she's different. The hard part will come, perhaps, when she realizes that her physiognomy allows her only to show the Chinese part. As much as she feels she is just like her sisters, she has deeply tanned skin and stick-straight hair that they can only covet. Likewise, she will covet the other girls' freckles and height at times, I'm sure. I would like all my kids to know that they are intrinsically singular and wonderful, whether they look similar to those around them or not. Shortly after Xanthe came home, Ari said with a sigh, "I'm special. But not as special as Xanthe. She's from China." It breaks my heart to think that any child would feel "not as special." What I hope for, for all kids, is that whatever their faces reveal to the world about where they came from, they know that they are right where they belong, and that who they are is exactly who they were meant to be.

Nutty

We have a Candy Cane and an Arabian at our house. Golda the Arabian and Ruby the Candy Cane are both thrilled with their parts. Now that that's settled, Golda is "workshopping" ideas for the cover art contest. Nutcracker Mania gets a little intense sometimes, for which I am grateful. Scott goes along with it with hardly a shake of his head and very little eye rolling. He wonders aloud how many more times he'll have to see this ballet in his life, but secretly he's grateful for each and every time, just like the rest of us. Perish the thought of a holiday season without visions of sugarplums set to Tchaikovsky!

Snuff

"Here, Mom, this snuff was in my bunny wabbit."
"Thanks, Xanthe. You're enormously helpful. But that is stuffing and it's supposed to be in there. Put it back."
"OK, I'm putting the snuffing back. Or my bunny wabbit won't be able to talk!"

It's so fun to have a comedian in the house. If you can't afford to have Jerry Seinfeld follow you around all day making you laugh, get a four-year-old. The only drawback might be that four-year-olds are far more demanding than A-list celebs.

Ruby Sparkles

Nutcracker audition day. It crept up on us this year, and suddenly I was waiting in agony for Golda to emerge from her tryout. So many girls came out crying, I was practically hysterical by the time I saw my girl. She made it, and my whole body breathed a sigh of relief. That acceptance paper is a gift, an invitation to a beautiful holiday season that starts now...

Ruby's audition was next. Having her mom as one of the audition teachers was not enough to ruffle Ruby, and she did well. I had the fortunate yet heartbreaking job of standing at the door as the girls left with their results. The joy and despair are palpable as the dancers receive their letters. Ruby, one of the last dancers, took her paper, clutched it to her chest without looking at it and stood next to me. At last, she peeked. I saw the word "congratulations" and melted in relief. Then we saw the writing at the bottom of the page. "Please come to Studio D at 5:00 for a Clara callback." My heart raced a quick lap around my body as I stared at Ruby, amazed and delighted. She was beside herself with elation. I really wanted to fall down and cry with gratitude, after everything Ruby has been through this year with her health. This one shining moment, Ruby's moment, was enough to erase all that. Ruby jumped and cheered and laughed, and I felt like I was soaking up sunlight to see her so joyful.

She had just enough time to spread the news before she had to be back at Studio D. She tried to trick everyone with a sad face, but could not contain her excitement for even a second. The car could scarcely hold Ruby's energy as I drove her to the callback. Afterwards, she said that it was difficult, that she couldn't think, that she couldn't remember much about it. The combinations were hard, she said, but her joy at the honor of being there hadn't waned. Come what may, this day has been a brilliant gift for a little gem. Ruby, we are so proud of you.

Super Diaper Baby

What are big brothers for if not to embarrass their little bros? Freestone used Ptolemy as a visual aid for his book report today. The book was Super Diaper Baby and Ptolemy was...the super diaper baby. To take a baby wearing nothing but a diaper into a first grade classroom is to guarantee success. Amid peals of laughter, Freestone showed off the 10-pound illustration of one of his favorite books. If Ptolemy was humiliated, he didn't show it. Or couldn't. The little guy doesn't exactly have control of his arms yet. If he did, he might have punched Freestone for holding him up for 20 first graders to laugh at. Then again, maybe he enjoyed the attention. I know Freestone did! He handed out paper to all the kids and demonstrated on the whiteboard how to draw Super Diaper Dog. The book includes step-by-step instructions, and Free did quite a good job of demonstrating.

Unfortunately, this wasn't Ptolemy's diaper debut at the school. Two days ago, several of our favorite teachers saw Tolly in just a Size 5 diaper that came up to his armpits, and nothing else. Why? Because during a meeting I was having with two school counsellors, a sea of mustard-colored goop somehow defied gravity, bypassed Tolly's diaper and slimed the whole front of my shirt. When I noticed, possibly several minutes after the other women in the room noticed, I burst out, "Oh my gosh, LOOK at this!" Just like most traffic accidents happen within 10 miles from home, diaper accidents can happen a block from your house. So why did I optimistically believe I could go to the school without a diaper bag, just because it was so close to home? Rookie mistake. OK, so I'm not a rookie. I don't have an excuse. The counsellor wrangled a giant diaper from the preschool room, along with a stack of wet napkins, while I tried to contain Tolly's arms, which were flailing around, flinging fluids. That's why all the teachers got to see Tolly in his giant diaper, two days before his official appearance as Super Diaper Baby. Talk about an ignominious start to your school career. On the bright side, our baby now has two appearances as Super Diaper Baby under his belt. His next role could be Professor Poopypants, from a book by the same author. We'll have to get him some thick glasses and a pocket protector. He could have a career in acting.

Question for Ya

My friend/mentor/old babysitter who wrote this wonderful book has a question for women. As she thinks about subject matter for her next book, DeAnne wonders what concerns are most pressing for women and/or mothers today. What do you worry about for yourself and your children and families? What problems are you trying to solve in your head right now? What do you struggle with? What would you like answers for? There are a lot of strong emotions behind the answers.

Here's the question: What are the three biggest concerns you have as a woman/mother? Leave a comment. Thanks!

Forensic Science

Just trying to ascertain which kid stole the Oreos out of the pantry this morning. Any ideas? Hint: Freestone isn't old enough to grow a goatee.

Wait for It...Wait for It...

This is what happens when I pick up Xanthe from preschool:
"Xanthe! Hello! Tell me all about preschool!"
"We played play-doh we played house we pretended we were moms we got out all the toys and we put them away and we went upstairs and we went outside and then it was my turn to swing...(ten minutes elapse, she's still talking)...and my teacher said we have to bring the show and tell bag and we learned about the letter B so we could go outside and my friends could play and...Then she sings all the songs they sang at school, followed by a chat about what they didn't do and what they could have done at school.

This is what happens when Freestone comes home from first grade:
"Freestone! Tell me all about first grade!"
"Good."
"Tell me your favorite thing you did today."
"Nuffin."
"How are you liking the French program?"
"I hate it."
"What do you hate about it?"
"The French."

And this is from a boy who has always been more loquacious than most. I'm reading a great book called The Wonder of Boys, which says this kind of sparse interaction is completely normal for boys. All I really know about Freestone's school day is that Jakey has warm mac n cheese in his lunch box. I know this because Free brought home a paper titled, "My favorite thing about school." It was a drawing of Jake's lunch.

Saturday, Freestone was rolling around under the kitchen table trying to kick people. Suddenly, he said, "Mom! Levez-vous!" (stand up.) Not only did I stand up, I jumped up and cheered. Those two words answered all my questions. The French is permeating a few brain cells. Freestone is listening. He is learning. School isn't too bad. He's comfortable enough with it to show off a new skill. No amount of interrogating could have elicited as much as those two unsolicited words. Just like the author of The Wonder of Boys says, the way boys do things isn't worse and doesn't have to be changed. It just has to be understood. Boys require patience in so many ways...but they're worth the wait!

Freestone Unleashed

Scott downloaded a demo of a video game called Sonic Unleashed yesterday. Today, Freestone can get through the whole game in five minutes, and each time he plays it, he gets a higher score. Watching him play, I thought what every parent of a six-year-old boy thinks. "Wow! He's a genius at this! How can I turn this into a lucrative career path?" Freestone's little character was racing through what looked like a Greek fishing village, collecting gold rings, jumping over buildings and dispatching bad robots. I couldn't believe how fast Freestone figured out what to do!

Not having played video games since Pac Man, I decided to test my skill, to compare it to Freestone. I thought maybe it was a lot easier than it looked. Nope. My character immediately started weaving around like he'd had one too many Ouzos. Every time he tripped over a crate or crashed into a wall, the character said, "Oof!" or "Ugh!" He managed to miss every gold ring as he staggered around, lost. One minute into the game, my confused and disoriented character was cornered in a dark alley by three husky robots and kicked to death. Freestone was yelling, "Square! Square!" Too bad I didn't know he was talking about which button to push. Pushing the Square button, thereby neutralizing the Greek robots, could have saved my life.

Now I believe in evolution. A generation from now, boys are going to be born with giant thumbs, suitable for operating PS3 controllers. Freestone already says thing like, "Mom, pause this game. I have to go to the bathroom." Only he's not talking about a game. He's referring to real life. Six-year-olds have trouble separating fantasy from reality. Hey, if your fantasy takes place on a sunny day in a Greek fishing village, I don't see a problem with that. As long as you avoid the robots.

Blessing Day

Ptolemy's blessing day couldn't have been any more perfect. Among scores of rich and treasured moments, I have a favorite: When Scott got up to bless Ptolemy and men started making their way to the front of the chapel, gathering around the baby. With their arms on each others' shoulders, the men who love our baby boy formed a literal representation of the protection they offer Ptolemy in life. As he grows, he has a whole lot of men to show him the way, through their example and their love.

Tolly lived up to his reputation and was a perfectly agreeable host for the family and friends who joined us for brunch. Any time you can get most of the people you love in the same room together AND have them bring food, it's a good day. A very, very good day!